Warden Of The North
by myhomeistheshire
Summary: Sansa is left to take charge of the Warden of the North. Jon goes to persuade a queen. Neither are easy tasks.


Sansa is the last Stark at Winterfell.

When Jon leaves is when it sinks in - she is alone. She is the only one left. This place that used to be home to all her family now feels akin to a graveyard - she can't help but see ghosts in every corner, and so she embraces it rather than attempting to run; spending every night wandering the tunnels and remembering. It helps distract from the memories of Ramsey. Of Joffrey. Of whatever could be happening to Jon right now.

Her days are spent barraged by people looking for answers that she doesn't have, and it keeps her pacing on the edge of the very sharp cliff of her sanity. The only voices that she truly hears are those of Littlefinger and the ghosts, and both are nothing more than whispers and worries.

She's so close to coming to the breaking point, when Bran arrives. She almost can't believe it when she sees him, looking so different and yet exactly the same. It doesn't take her long to see how much he's changed, though, and having him home becomes a bittersweet reminder of days past. Then again, Sansa reminds herself, she isn't the same girl who left for king's landing, either.

Besides, she is not the only Stark, now, in Winterfell.

Arya arrives soon after Bran, and Sansa feels her heart swell for the third time in so many weeks - after being numb for so long, it hurts like frozen skin beginning to warm. A good kind of breaking, but breaking nonetheless.

She is still lonely. Her siblings are distant from her in a way that they never were growing up - she has them back, but it doesn't feel quite like it. She misses Jon, and the friendship they'd birthed that had been so lacking in their childhood. If he were here, maybe they would be able to find a semblance of normalcy. Or maybe it would just remind them all of the brothers they were missing; the Starks had been torn apart so many times that maybe they could never be stitched back together.

She wakes up every night from the nightmares and continues to explore her old home. She finds comfort in the stone walls; the torchlit halls. Winterfell was her home, once; she believes it might be once again. Despite her parents. Despite Robb, and Rickon. Despite this whole damned war.

Jon sends a raven, two weeks later.

 _The queen has an iron will,_ he writes, _and she is not eager to divert her war. But she is not stupid, and she is willing to see reason. It might take some time to convince her we are trustworthy. In the meantime, Sir Davos and I are both safe, if homesick, and will return to Winterfell as soon as we are able._

She reads this one aloud to Arya and Bran, keeping the second slip of paper to herself. Their reactions are measured; Bran's expression does not change, and Arya only looks down at her hands.

"If he doesn't come home soon," she says decidedly, "I'm going to King's Landing. I'm not doing anything for the war here, and Cersei Lannister -" she looks up and pierces Sansa with a look that chills her to the bone, "is on my list."

The second slip of paper, which she opens later in her room, is addressed only to her.

 _Sansa,_ Jon's handwriting says, his voice ringing in her ears, _I'm sorry I left you. I know too many people have left you lately, but I give you my word: I will come home. I will come home with hope for this war, that when it is over, we can be a family again. We will have Winterfell, and we will be alive, and there will be peace._

She falls asleep to the crackling of the fireplace, Jon's letter held hostage by her hands. This time the nightmares are of her brother, dressed in the cloak she made him, being roasted alive by dragons a thousand miles away.

* * *

Jon's hand hovers over the paper. _I miss you,_ he moves to write, then stops himself. Instead, he simply signs it, _Jon._

He does miss her. The girl whom he'd so resented as a child, turned to an ally. A friend. A sister. He misses her strength, out here in the south, where everything is too strange and cryptic and one wrong word from his mouth could doom the whole of mankind. Sansa would fit in here: this new woman, this lionness who navigated royalty and betrayal and managed to always come out on top; she would know what to say. But nevertheless, Sansa is a thousand miles away and no doubt occupied with the running of Winterfell, and it's left to him to solve his own problems, this time.

Tyrion mystifies him. He can't help but see him as the man who had wed his sister, but he is starting to see that the marriage hadn't been celebrated from either side. He belonged to the Lannisters, but he isn't one of them - the way he speaks of Jon's sister is that of a mentor, not a lover. And he is shrewd, in the way no one else on the island is. This above all makes Jon wary, but from what he can tell he only ever uses his cunning to bring about a common reasoning, not manipulate either party. And so, cautiously, he begins to trust the dwarf.

"He's not like the Lannisters," Sansa had told him the night after she'd returned, when they spent until the early hours reminiscing and catching up on the happenings of the past years. "We were married, and he knew what was expected of us. What was _needed_ of us. He knew what would happen if I didn't -" she let out a breath, and Jon saw that her knuckles were white against the dark bowl of soup in her hands. "But he let me be." She finally met his eyes, and there was nothing small or weak about the look in her own. "He took care of me, and he did his best to guide me through the ways of the royal family with as little carnage as possible."

And this made him laugh, because this was the best description he'd heard of the Lannister's court in ages.

Sansa's face broke out into a smile to match his own, and he was gripped again by how sparingly she smiled now, as compared to when they were children. "He was good to me when no one else was," she finished simply, and Jon reached out and gripped her hand.

"For that, he has my eternal thanks", he told her solemnly, hoping his touch would tell her how good it felt to have her here, and to know she was safe. She squeezed his hand back, and he knew that she understood.

He receives a raven from her four days later, as the sky is turning dusk across the water. He slips it into his pocket, earning curious looks from the dragon queen and her advisor, but he doesn't care; his family is the one thing here that will remain only his own.

He unrolls the page once he is alone: he almost doesn't recognize Sansa's writing, now that it's perfected; he remembers the girlish scrawl she used to scratch across pages, over and over again, more intent on her journal than on the goings on of Winterfell.

 _Jon,_ it reads, _Arya and Bran are home._

He stares at the letter, reading and re-reading the opening. His heart rises in his throat, and he fights down the impulse to immediately seek out Daenerys and demand a ship to sail for Winterfell. All his living family are home, and the need to be reunited with them is almost too much to bear. _Arya is alive. Bran is alive._ He continues reading.

 _We haven't spoken about what we've done in the years past. Bran seems to think it doesn't matter, and Arya either cannot or will not let on beyond vague recollections. I would try to start the process, but I couldn't even tell you about it - I don't think I could manage the tale twice. I will promise to do my best, once we are all home again._

He remembers, again, that first night together in so long. He'd tried to ask her about King's landing; about Ramsey Bolton.

"Joffrey was a monster." Sansa had begun in a clipped voice. "Cersei was too, but in moderation, when she needed something - my _betrothed_ was cruel for the purpose of being cruel, with no limits or emotions to hinder him as they did her.

"I was to be married to a monster, and then I wasn't. I made the mistake of thinking I could be free - that I could return home. But of course, I was shuttled off. Married to the insult of the family. Framed for murder, and when I was saved from that -" she swallowed, hard. "I was free for a moment, and then I was shipped off to Ramsey like an old warhorse with a broken leg. Held like a captive, beaten like a slave. Until I escaped."

And she would say nothing more about it.

 _I know that what you're doing is important. But please, hurry. Arya and Bran - well, they're different. We all are, I suppose. But it's harder when you're not here._

 _The war is coming, and the north needs its commander. The Starks need their brother. Come home soon._

 _Sansa_

* * *

Of all things to be distracted by, Sansa is having trouble sitting.

She has too many counsels, too many meetings, too many public meals. The chair at the head of the hall is sturdy and coarse, and it digs into the cuts on her back with a cruel kind of vigor. Since her first day as warden of the north, she undresses painstakingly each night, peeling her underclothes from her back and biting her lip as they catch on the re-opened wounds. It doesn't hurt as much as when Ramsey made them, but somehow it feels more like a betrayal these days - Winterfell is hers again. Ramsey is dead. He should not be able to hurt her here, even now.

Arya finds out, as Sansa should have expected her to. This woman is cunning and strong and clever, and seems to know things before anyone is told. Sansa's heart hurts for the fire she knows must have sparked the change from the girl she once knew.

"You're bleeding on your nightclothes," Arya confronts her late one night as she wanders Winterfell's halls wrapped in her fur cloak. She startles at the voice, then softens once she sees who it belongs to. "Why?"

"That's rather personal, don't you think?" Sansa replies dismissively, sinking into the condescending older sister role that she was so used to, so long ago.

"Not when it's your sister," Arya replies matter of factly. "Not when it's the ruler of the north."

"Well." Sansa looks away, studying the statues ahead of her. It seems this is the only place that they speak anymore. "You do make a persuasive argument."

"Well then?" Arya's impatience creeps into her voice; and this, at least, is familiar. "Are you hurting yourself?"

Sansa whirls around in astonishment. "Of course not!" She exclaims, her voice sharper than she'd intended.

Arya waits, then, for her response.

"Ramsey was not a good husband," Sansa explains slowly, hands wound together. "He would do - things."

"Beat you," Arya realizes aloud. "Cut you."

"It's over now," Sansa replies, her voice growing softer at the concern in her younger sister's voice. "But that stupid chair is so knotted, and the wounds tend to open upon pressure."

"Get rid of it," Arya replies with a look that says clearly: you idiot. "It's just a chair."

"Father's chair," Sansa reminds her, "Jon's chair."

When she sends her raven to Jon, she pretends she doesn't see Arya slip in a note of her own.

* * *

Jon comes upon the addendum the day after the raven had come, when he is speaking to Daenerys in yet another heated argument about the future of the north. _The future of men,_ he reminds her each time.

It must have fallen into his pocket, when he'd hidden the letter from the prying eyes of too many politicians, and now he unravels it to see Arya's scrawl, still so messy he can barely make out the words.

 _Tell Sansa to quit standing on ceremony and get rid of your chair. It's rubbing open the cuts on her back, and she's refusing to sit anywhere else because of tradition. It's stupid. Better yet, come home and tell her in person. Bran and I miss you, too._

His joy at seeing his youngest sister's writing quickly melds into fury. _The cuts on her back_. His hands clench into fists, remembering how she looked when she'd first escaped Winterfell - broken. Small. _You can't protect me. No one can._

The next day, Daenerys gives in.

It comes as a burst of joy, this news that she will come with him to the north. Finally, he will be home. They'll _all_ be home. His dead siblings have come back to Winterfell, and he waits with bated breath to see them alive once more.

* * *

Sansa waits for a raven, and when one doesn't come, she worries. Until she hears news of dragons. Until she sees her brother and the Targaryen queen, striding towards the gates of Winterfell.

She runs towards him. Arya is close behind her. Bran is watching from the wall.

And then he is holding her, arms wrapped around her so tight she can barely breathe, but she can do nothing but laugh and cry, all together.

"You idiot," he mumbles into her ear, "that _stupid chair._ "

And she can't even be angry that Arya told him, because they are all here. They are all _home._

It is well worth the wait.


End file.
